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THE DISENTANGLERS 


J 



THE DISENTANGLERS 


BY 

ANDREW 


/ 

LANG 



NEW YORK 

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 



THE LIBRARY OF 
60NGRESS, 
Two Copies Receivco 

DEC. 1901 

Onr~aK>MT EN'Pnv 
CLASS ^KXc m.k 

2 - 2 . S /7 

COPT 3. 


Copyright, 1901, 

By ANDREW LANG 

All rights reserved 


Mnibevattjfl l^ress 

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A 



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THE DISENTANGLERS 

I 

THE GREAT IDEA 

T he scene was a dusky shabby little room in 
Ryder Street. To such caves many repair 
whose days are passed, and whose food is consumed, 
in the clubs of the adjacent thoroughfare of co- 
operative palaces, Pall Mall. The furniture was 
battered and dingy; the sofa on which Logan 
sprawled had a certain historic interest: it was 
covered with cloth of horsehair, now seldom found 
by the amateur. A bookcase with glass doors held 
a crowd of books to which the amateur would at 
once have flown. They were in * boards ’ of faded 
blue, and the paper labels bore alluring names: 
they were all First Editions of the most desirable 
kind. The bottles in the liqueur case were an- 
tique ; a coat of arms, not undistinguished, was in 
relief on the silver stoppers. But the liquors in 
the flasks were humble and conventional. Merton, 
the tenant of the rooms, was in a Zingari cricketing 
coat; he occupied the arm-chair, while Logan, in 
evening dress, maintained a difficult equilibrium 

I 


2 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


on the slippery sofa. Both men were of an age 
between twenty-five and twenty-nine, both were 
pleasant to the eye. Merton was, if anything, 
under the middle height: fair, slim, and active. 
As a freshman he had coxed his College Eight, 
later he rowed Bow in that vessel. He had won 
the Hurdles, but been beaten by his Cambridge 
opponent; he had taken a fair second in Greats, 
was believed to have been ‘ runner up ’ for the 
Newdigate prize poem, and might have won other 
laurels, but that he was found to do the female 
parts very fairly in the dramatic performances of 
the University, a thing irreconcilable with study. 
His father was a rural dean. Merton’s most obvious 
vice was a thirst for general information. ' I know 
it is awfully bad form to know anything,’ he had 
been heard to say, ‘ but everyone has his failings, 
and mine is occasionally useful. ’ 

Logan was tall, dark, athletic and indolent. He 
was, in a way, the last of an historic Scottish 
family, and rather fond of discoursing on the ances- 
tral traditions. But any satisfaction that he de- 
rived from them was, so far, all that his birth had 
won for him. His little patrimony had taken to 
itself wings. Merton was in no better case. Both, 
as they sat together, were gloomily discussing their 
prospects. 

In the penumbra of smoke, and the malignant 
light of an ill trimmed lamp, the Great Idea was to 
be evolved. What consequences hung on the Great 
Idea! The peace of families insured, at a trifling 
premium. Innocence rescued. The defeat of the 


THE GREAT IDEA 


3 


subtlest criminal designers: undreamed of benefits 
to natural science! But I anticipate. We return 
to the conversation in the Ryder Street den. 

* It is a case of emigration or the workhouse,’ 
said Logan. 

‘ Emigration 1 What can you or I do in the Colo- 
nies.? They provide even their own ushers. My 
only available assets, a little Greek and less Latin, 
are drugs in the Melbourne market,’ answered Mer- 
ton ; * they breed their own dominies. Protection ! ’ 

* In America they might pay for lessons in the 
English accent . . .’ said Logan. 

* But not,’ said Merton, ‘in the Scotch, which 
is yours; oh distant cousin of a marquis! Conse- 
quently by rich American lady pupils “you are not 
one to be desired.” ’ 

‘Tommy, you are impertinent,’ said Logan. 
‘ Oh, hang it, where is there an opening, a demand, 
for the broken, the stoney broke ? A man cannot 
live by casual paragraphs alone.’ 

‘ And these generally reckoned “too high-toned 
for our readers,” ’ said Merton. 

‘ If I could get the secretaryship of a golf club ! ’ 
Logan sighed. 

‘ If you could get the Chancellorship of the 
Exchequer! I reckon that there are two million 
applicants for secretaryships of golf cluhs. ’ 

‘ Or a land agency, ’ Logan murmured. 

‘ Oh, be practical ! ’ cried Merton. ‘ Be inven- 
tive ! Be modern ! Be up to date ! Think of 
something new! Think of a felt want, as the 
Cameronian divine calls it: a real public need. 


4 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


hitherto but dimly present, and quite a demand 
without a supply. ’ 

‘But that means thousands in advertisements,’ 
said Logan, ‘ even if we ran a hair-restorer. The 
ground bait is too expensive. I say, I once knew 
a fellow who ground-baited for salmon with potted 
shrimps. ’ 

‘ Make a paragraph on him then, ’ said Merton. 

‘ But results proved that there was no felt want 
of potted shrimps — or not of a fly to follow.’ 

‘ Your collaboration in the search, the hunt for 
money, the quest, consists merely in irrelevan- 
cies and objections,’ growled Merton, lighting a 
cigarette. 

‘ Lucky devil, Peter Nevison. Meets an heiress 
on a Channel boat, with 4,000/. a year; and there 
he is.’ Logan basked in the reflected sunshine. 

‘ Cut by her people, though — and other people- 
I could not have faced the row with her people,’ 
said Merton musingly. 

‘ I don’t wonder they moved heaven and earth, 
and h'er uncle, the bishop, to stop it. Not eligible, 
Peter was not, however you took him,’ Logan re- 
flected. ‘ Took too much of this,’ he pointed to the 
heraldic flask. 

‘ Well, she took him. It is not much that 
parents, still less guardians, can do now, when a 
girl’s mind is made up.’ 

‘ The emancipation of woman is the opportunity 
of the indigent male struggles Women have their 
way,’ Logan reflected. 

‘ And the youth of the modern aged is the oppor- 


THE GREAT IDEA 


5 


tunity of our sisters, the girls “on the make,” ’ said 
Merton. ‘ What a lot of old men of title are marry- 
ing young women as hard up as we are ! ’ 

‘ And then, ’ said Logan, ‘ the offspring of the 
deceased marchionesses make a fuss.' In fact mar- 
riage is always the signal for a family row.’ 

‘ It is the infernal family row that I never could 

face. I had a chance ’ 

Merton seemed likely to drop into autobiography. 

‘ I know,’ said Logan admonishingly. 

‘Well, hanged if I could take it, and she — she 

could not stand it either, and both of us ’ 

‘Do not be elegiac,’ interrupted Logan. ‘I 
know. Still, I am rather sorry for people’s people. 
The unruly affections simply poison the lives of 
parents and guardians, aye, and of the children too. 
The aged are now so hasty and imprudent. What 
would not Tala have given to prevent his Grace 
from marrying Mrs. Tankerville ’ 

Merton leapt to his feet and smote his brow. 
‘Wait, don’t speak to me — a great thought 
flushes all my brain. Hush! I have it,’ and he 
sat down again, pouring seltzer water into a half 
empty glass. 

‘ Have what } ’ asked Logan. 

‘ The Felt Want. But the accomplices.? ’ 

‘ But the advertisements ! ’ suggested Logan. 

‘ A few pounds will cover tAem. I can sell my 
books,’ Merton sighed. 

‘ A lot of advertising your first editions will pay 

for.. Why, even to launch a hair-restorer takes ’ 

‘ Oh, but, ’ Merton broke in, ‘ this want is so 


6 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


widely felt, acutely felt too: hair is not in it. 
But where are the accomplices.? ’ 

‘ If it is gentleman burglars I am not concerned. 
No raffles for me! If it is venal physicians to kill 
off rich relations, the lives of the Logans are sacred 
to me. ’ 

‘ Bosh I ’ said Merton, ‘ I want “lady friends,” as 
Tennyson says: nice girls, well born, well bred, 
trying to support themselves. ’ 

* What do you want them for.? To support them .? ’ 

‘ I want them as accomplices,’ said Merton. ^ As 
collaborators.’ 

‘ Blackmail .? ’ asked Logan. ‘ Has it come to 
this? I draw the line at blackmail. Besides, they 
would starve first, good girls would ; or marry Lord 
Methusalem, or a beastly South African richard. ’ 

‘ Patrick Logan of Restalrig, that should be ’ — 
Merton spoke impressively — ‘you know me to be 
incapable of practices, however lucrative, which 
involve taint of crime. I do not prey upon the 
society which I propose to benefit. But where are 
the girls .? ’ 

‘Where are they not.?’ Logan asked. ‘Daw- 
dling, as jesters, from country house to country 
house. In the British Museum, verifying refer- 
ences for literary gents, if they can get references 
to verify. Asking leave to describe their friends’ 
parties in The Leidy s News. Trying for places 
as golfing governesses, or bridge governesses, or 
gymnastic mistresses at girls’ schools, or lady 
laundresses, or typewriters, or lady teachers of 
cookery, or pegs to hang costumes on at dress- 


THE GREAT IDEA 


7 


makers’. The most beautiful girl I ever saw was 
doing that once; I met her when I was shopping 
with my aunt who left her money to the Armenians.’ 

‘You kept up her acquaintance.? The girl’s, I 
mean,’ Merton asked. 

‘ We have occasionally met. In fact ’ 

‘Yes, I know, as you said lately,’ Merton re- 
marked. ‘ That’s one, anyhow, and there is Mary 
Willoughby, who got a second in history when I 
was up. She would do. Better business for her 
than the British Museum. I know three or four.’ 

‘ I know five or six. But what for.? ’ Logan 
insisted. 

‘ To help us in supplying the widely felt want, 
which is my discovery,’ said Merton. 

‘ And that is ? ’ 

‘ Disentanglers. — of both sexes. A large and 
varied staff, calculated to meet every requirement 
and cope with every circumstance. ’ Merton quoted 
an unwrtten prospectus. 

‘ I don’t follow. What the deuce is your felt 
want .? ’ 

‘ What we were talking about. ’ 

‘ Ground bait for salmon .? ’ Logan reverted to his 
idea. 

‘ No. Family rows about marriages. Nasty let- 
ters. Refusals to recognise the choice of a son, 
a daughter, or a widowed but youthful old parent, 
among the upper classes. Harsh words. Refu- 
sals to allow meetings or correspondence. Broken 
hearts. Improvident marriages. Preaching down 
a daughter’s heart, or an aged parent’s heart, or a 


8 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


nephew’s, or a niece’s, or a ward’s, or anybody’s 
heart. Peace restored to the household. Intended 
marriage off, and nobody a penny the worse, 
unless ’ 

‘ Unless what.^ ’ said Logan. 

‘Practical difficulties,’ said Merton, ‘will occur 
in every enterprise. But they won’t be to our dis- 
advantage, the reverse — if they don’t happen too 
often. And we can guard against that by a scien- 
tific process. ’ 

‘ Now will you explain,’ Logan asked, ‘ or shall I 
pour this whisky and water down the back of your 
neck} ’ 

He rose to his feet, menace in his eye. 

‘ Bear fighting barred ! We are no longer boys. 
We are men — broken men. Sit down, don’t play 
the bear,’ said Merton. 

‘ Well, explain, or I fire! ’ 

‘ Don’t you see.? The problem for the family, for 
hundreds of families, is to get the undesirable mar- 
riage off without the usual row. Very few people 
really like a row. Daughter becomes anaemic; 
foreign cures are expensive and no good. Son goes 
to the Devil or the Cape. Aged and opulent, but 
amorous, parent leaves everything he can scrape 
together to disapproved of new wife. Relations 
cut each other all round. Not many people really 
enjoy that kind of thing. They want a pacific 
solution — marriage off, no remonstrances. ’ 

‘ And how are you going to do it } ’ 

‘Why,’ said Merton, ‘by a scientific and thor- 
oughly organised system of disengaging or disen- 


THE GREAT IDEA 


9 


tangling. We enlist a lot of girls and fellows like 
ourselves, beautiful, attractive, young, or not so 
young, well connected, intellectual, athletic, and of 
all sorts of types, but all broke^ all without visible 
means of subsistence. They are people welcome 
in country houses, but travelling third class, and 
devilishly perplexed about how to tip the servants, 
how to pay if they lose at bridge, and so forth. 
We enlist them, we send them out on demand, care- 
fully selecting our agents to meet -the circumstances 
in each case. They go down and disentangle the 
amorous by — well, by entangling them. The 
lovers are off with the old love, the love which 
causes all the worry, without being on with the new 
love — our agent. The thing quietly fizzles out. ’ 

'Quietly!’ Logan snorted. 'I like "quietly.” 
They would be on with the new love. Don’t you 
see, you born gomeral, that the person, man or 
woman, who deserts the inconvenient A. — I put an 
A. B. case — falls in love with your agent B., and 
your B. is, by the nature of the thing, more ineli- 
gible than A. — too poor. A babe could see that. 
You disappoint me, Merton.’ 

'You state,’ said Merton, 'one of the practical 
difficulties which I foresaw. Not that it does not 
suit us very well. Our comrade and friend, man 
or woman, gets a chance of a good marriage, and, 
Logan, there is no better thing. But parents and 
guardians would not stand much of that : of people 
marrying our agents. ’ 

' Of course they would n’t. Your idea is crazy.’ 

' Wait a moment,’ said Merton. 'The resources 


lO 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


of science are not yet exhausted. You have heard 
of the epoch-making discovery of Jenner, and its 
beneficent results in checking the ravages of small- 
pox, that scourge of the human race.^* ' 

‘ Oh don’t talk like a printed book,’. Logan remon- 
strated. ‘ Everybody has heard of vaccination. 

*And you are aware that similar prophylactic 
measures have been adopted, with more or less of 
success, in the case of other diseases ? ’ 

‘ I am aware,’ said Logan, ‘ that you are in danger 
of personal suffering at my hands, as I already warned 
you.’ 

‘What is love but a disease?’ Merton asked 
dreamily. ‘ A French savant^ Monsieur Janet, says 
that nobody ever falls in love except when he is a 
little bit off colour: I forget the French equivalent.’ 

‘I am coming for you,’ Logan arose in wrath. 

‘ Sit down. Well, your objection (which it did 
not need the eyes of an Argus to discover) is that 
the patients, the lovers young, whose loves are dis- 
approved of by the family, will fall in love with our 
agents, insist on marrying them^ and so the last 
state of these afflicted parents — or children — will 
be worse than the first. Is that your objection?’ 

‘ Of course it is ; and crushing at that,’ Logan 
replied. 

‘Then science suggests prophylactic measures: 
something akin to vaccination,’ Merton explained. 
‘ The agents must be warranted “ immune.” Nice 
new word ! ’ 

‘ How? ’ 

‘ The object,’ Merton answered, ‘ is to make it 


THE GREAT IDEA 


II 


impossible, or highly improbable, that our agents, 
after disentangling the affections of the patients, cur- 
ing them of one attajck, will accept their addresses, 
offered in a second fit of the fever. In brief, the 
agents must not marry the patients, or not often.' 

‘ But how can you prevent them if they want to 
do it?’ 

‘ By a process akin, in the emotional region of our 
strangely blended nature, to inoculation.’ 

‘ Hanged if I understand you. You keep on re- 
peating yourself. You dodder ! ’ 

‘ Our agents must have got the disease already, the 
pretty fever; and be safe against infection. There 
must be on the side of the agent a prior attachment. 
Now, don’t interrupt, there always is a prior attach- 
ment. You are in love, I am in love, he, she, and 
they, all of the broken brigade, are in love; all the 
more because they have not a chance. “ Cursed be 
the social wants that sin against the strength of 
youth.” So, you see, our agents will be quite safe 
not to crown the flame of the patients, not to accept 
them, if they do propose, or expect a proposal. 
“ Every security from infection guaranteed.” There 
is the felt want. Here is the remedy ; not warranted 
absolutely painless, but salutary, and tending to the 
amelioration of the species. So we have only to 
enlist the agents, and send a few advertisements to 
the papers. My first editions must go. Farewell 
Shelley, Tennyson, Keats, uncut Waverleys, Byron, 
The Waltz, early Kiplings (at a vast reduction on 
account of the overflooded state of the market). 
Farewell Kilmarnock edition of Burns, and Colonel 


12 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


Lovelace, his Lucastay and Tamerlane by Mr. Poe, 
and the rest. The money must be raised.’ Merton 
looked resigned. 

' I have nothing to sell,’ said Logan, ‘ but an entire 
set of clubs by Philp. Guaranteed unique, and in 
exquisite condition.’ 

‘ You must part with them,’ said Merton. ‘We are 
like Palissy the potter, feeding his furnace with the 
drawing-room furniture.’ 

‘But how about the recruiting?’ Logan asked. 
‘ It ’s like one of these novels where you begin by 
collecting desperados from all quarters, and then the 
shooting commences.’ 

‘ Well, we need not ransack the Colonies,’ Merton 
replied. ‘ Patronise British industries. We know 
some fellows already and some young women.’ 

‘ I say,’ Logan interrupted, ‘ what a dab at dis- 
entangling Lumley would have been if he had not 
got that Professorship of Toxicology at Edinburgh, 
and been able to marry Miss Wingan at last! ’ 

‘ Yes, and Miss Wingan would have been useful. 
What a lively girl, ready for everything,’ Merton 
replied. 

‘ But these we can still get at,’ Logan asked : ‘ how 
are you to be sure that they are — vaccinated? ’ 

‘ The inquiry is delicate,’ Merton admitted, ‘ but 
the fact may be almost taken for granted. We must 
give a dinner (a preliminary expense) to promising 
collaborators, and champagne is a great promoter of 
success in delicate inquiries. In vino veritasl 

‘ I don’t know if there is money in it but there is a 
kind of larkiness,’ Logan admitted. 


THE GREAT IDEA 


13 


‘ Yes, I think there will be larks.’ 

‘About the dinner? We are not to have Johnnies 
disguised as hansom cabbies driving about, and pick- 
ing up men and women that look the right sort, in 
the streets, and compelling them to come in? ’ 

‘ Oh no, that expense we can cut. It would not 
do with the women, obviously : heavens, what queer 
fishes that net would catch ! The flag of the Disen- 
tanglers shall never be stained by — anything. You 
know some likely agents : I know some likely agents. 
They will suggest others, as our field of usefulness 
widens. Of course there is the oath of secrecy: we 
shall administer that after dinner to each guest 
apart.’ 

‘Jolly difficult for those that are mixed up with 
the press to keep an oath of secrecy ! ’ Logan spoke 
as a press man. 

‘ We shall only have to do with gentlemen and 
ladies. The oath is not going to sanction itself with 
religious terrors. Good form — we shall appeal to 
a “ sense of form ” — now so widely diffused by 
University Extension Lectures on the Beautiful, the 
Fitting, the ’ 

‘Oh shut up! ’ cried Logan. ‘You always haver 
after midnight. For, look here, here is an objection; 
this precious plan of yours, parents and others could 
work it for themselves. I dare say they do. When 
they see the affections of a son, or a daughter, or a 
bereaved father beginning to stray towards A., they 
probably invite B. to come and stay and act as a 
lightning conductor. They don’t need us.’ 

‘ Oh, don’t they? They seldom have an eligible 


14 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


and satisfactory lightning conductor at hand, some- 
body to whom they can trust their dear one. Or, if 
they have, the dear one has already been bored with 
the intended lightning conductor (who is old, or 
plain, or stupid, or familiar, at best), and they won’t 
look at him or her. Now our Disentanglers are not 
going to be plain, or dull, or old, or stale, or com- 
monplace — we ’ll take care of that. My dear fellow, 
don’t you know how dismal the partis selected for a 
man or girl invariably is? Now we provide a differ- 
ent and superior article, a fresh article too, not a 
familiar bore or a neighbour.’ 

‘Well, there is a good deal in that, as you say,’ 
Logan admitted. ‘ But decent people will think the 
whole speculation shady. How are you to get round 
that? There is something you have forgotten.’ 

‘What? ’ Merton asked. 

‘ Why it stares you in the face. References. Un- 
exceptionable references; people will expect them 
all round.’ 

‘ Please don’t say “ unexceptionable ” ; say “ refer- 
ences beyond the reach of cavil.” ’ Merton was a 
purist. ‘ It costs more in advertisements, but my 
phrase at once enlists the sympathy of every liberal 
and elegant mind. But as to references (and I am 
glad that you have some common sense, Logan), 
there is, let me see, there is the Dowager.’ 

‘ The divine Althaea — Marchioness of Bowton? ’ 

‘ The same,’ said Merton. ‘ The oldest woman, 
and the most recklessly up-to-date in London. She 
has seen bien d' autreSy and wants to see more.’ 

‘ She will do; and my aunt,’ Logan said. 


THE GREAT IDEA 


15 

‘ Not, oh, of course not, the one who left her 
money to the Armenians?’ Morton asked. 

‘ No, another. And there ’s old Lochmaben’s 
young wife, my cousin, widely removed, by marriage. 
She is American, you know, and perhaps you know 
her book. Social Experiments f ’ 

‘ Yes, it is not half bad,’ Merton conceded, ‘ and 
her heart will be in what I fear she will call “ the new 
departure.” And she is pretty, and highly respected 
in the parish.’ 

‘ And there ’s my aunt I spoke of, or great aunt, 
Niss Nicky Maxwell. The best old thing: a beauti- 
ful monument of old gentility, and she would give 
her left hand to help any one of the clan.’ 

‘She will do. And there’s Mrs. . Brown-Smith, 
Lord Yarrow’s daughter, who married the patent 
soap man. Elle est capable de tout. A real good 
woman, but full of her fun.’ 

‘ That will do for the lady patronesses. We must 
secure them at once.’ 

‘ But won’t the clients blab? ’ Logan suggested. 

‘ They can’t,’ Merton said. ‘ They would be 
laughed at consumedly. It will be their interest to 
hold their tongues.’ 

‘ Well, let us hope that they will see it in that 
light.’ Logan was not too sanguine. 

Merton had a better opinion of his enterprise. 

‘ People, if they come to us at all for assistance in 
these very delicate and intimate affairs, will have too 
much to lose by talking about them. They may 
not come, we can only try, but if they come they 
will be silent as the grave usually is.’ 


i6 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


‘ Well, it is late, and the whisky is low,’ said Logan 
in mournful tones. ‘ May the morrow’s reflections 
justify the inspiration of — the whisky. Good 
night ! ’ 

‘ Good night,’ said Merton absently. 

He sat down when Logan had gone, and wrote a 
few notes on large sheets of paper. He was elabo- 
rating the scheme. ‘ If collaboration consists in mak- 
ing objections, as the French novelist said, Logan 
is a rare collaborator,’ Merton muttered as he turned 
out the pallid lamp and went to bed. 

Next morning, before dressing, he revolved the 
scheme. It bore the change of light and survived 
the inspiration of alcohol. Logan looked in after 
breakfast. He had no new objections. They pro- 
ceeded to action. 


II 


FROM THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES 
HE first step towards ’ Merton’s scheme was 



X taken at once. The lady patronesses were 
approached. The divine Althaea instantly came in. 
She had enjoyed few things more since the .Duchess 
of Richmond’s ball on the eve of Waterloo. Miss 
Nicky Maxwell at first professed a desire to open 
her coffers, ‘ only anticipating,’ she said, ‘ an event ’ 
— which Logan declined in any sense to antici- 
pate. Lady Lochmaben said that they would have 
a lovely time as experimental students of society. 
Mrs. Brown-Smith instantly offered her own services 
as a Disentangler, her lord being then absent in 
America studying the negro market for detergents. 

‘ I think,’ she said, ‘ he expects Brown-Smith’s brand 
to make an Ethiopian change his skin, and then means 
to exhibit him as an advertisement.’ 

‘ And settle the negro question by making them all 
white men,’ said Logan, as he gracefully declined the 
generous but compromising proposal of the lady. 
‘Yet, after all,’ thought he, ‘is she not right? The 
prophylactic precautions would certainly be increased, 
morally speaking, if the Disentanglers were married.’ 
But while he pigeon-holed this idea for future refer- 


2 


1 8 ' THE DISENTANGLERS 

ence, at the moment he could not see his way to 
accepting Mrs. Brown-Smith’s spirited idea. She 
reluctantly acquiesced in his view of the case, but, 
like the other dames, promised to guarantee, if 
applied to, the absolute respectability of the enter- 
prise. The usual vows of secrecy were made, and 
(what borders on the supernatural) they were 
kept. 

Merton’s first editions went to Sotheby’s, ‘ Property 
of a gentleman who is changing his objects of collec- 
tion.’ A Russian archduke bought Logan’s unique 
set of golf clubs by Philp. Funds accrued from 
other sources. Logan had a friend, dearer friend 
had no man, one Trevor, a pleasant bachelor whose 
sister kept house for him. His purse, or rather his 
cheque book, gaped with desire to be at Logan’s 
service, but had gaped in vain. Finding Logan 
grinning one day over the advertisement columns 
of a paper at the club, his prophetic soul discerned 
a good thing, and he wormed it out ‘ in dern privacy.’ 
He slapped his manly thigh and insisted on being in 
it — as a capitalist. The other stoutly resisted, but 
was overcome. 

‘You need an office, you need retaining fees, you 
need outfits for the accomplices, and it is a legitimate 
investrrtent. I ’ll take interest and risks,’ said Trevor. 

So the money was found. 

The inaugural dinner, for the engaging of accom- 
plices, was given in a private room of a restaurant in 
Pall Mall. 

The dinner was gay, but a little pathetic. Neatness, 
rather than the gloss of novelty (though other gloss 


FROM THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES 19 

there was), characterised the garments of the men. 
The toilettes of the women were modest; that amount 
of praise (and it is a good deal) they deserved. A 
young lady, Miss Maskelyne, an amber-hued beauty, 
who practically lived as a female jester at the houses 
of the great, shone resplendent, indeed, but magnifi- 
cence of apparel was demanded by her profession. 

‘ I am so tired of it,’ she said to Merton. ‘ Fancy 
being more and more anxious for country house invita- 
tions. Fancy an artist’s feelings, when she knows she 
has not been a success. And then when the woman 
of the house detests you ! She often does. And when 
they ask you to give your imitation of So-and-so, and 
forget that his niece is in the room ! Do you know 
what they would have called people like me a hun- 
dred years ago? Toad-eaters! There is one of us 
in an old novel I read a bit of once. She goes about, 
an old maid, to houses. Once she arrived in a snow 
storm and a hearse. Am I come to that? I keep 
learning new drawing-room tricks. And when you 
fall ill, as I did at Eckford, and you can’t leave, and 
you think they are tired to death of you ! Oh, it is 
I who am tired, and time passes, and one grows old. 
I am a hag I ’ 

Merton said ‘ what he ought to have said,’ and 
what, indeed, was true. He was afraid she would 
tell him what she owed her dressmakers. Therefore 
he steered the talk round to sport, then to the High- 
lands, then to Knoydart, then to Alastair Macdonald 
of Craigiecorrichan, and then Merton knew, by a 
tone in the voice, a drop of the eyelashes, that Miss 
Maskelyne was — vaccinated. Prophylactic meas- 


20 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


ures had been taken : this agent ran no risk of infec- 
tion. There was Alastair. 

Merton turned to Miss Willoughby, on his left. 
She was tall, dark, handsome, but a little faded, and 
not plump: few of the faces round the table were 
plump and well liking. Miss Willoughby, in fact, 
dwelt in one room, in Bloomsbury, and dined on 
cocoa and bread and butter. These were for her 
the rewards of the Higher Education. She lived 
by copying crabbed manuscripts. 

‘Do you ever go up to Oxford now?’ said Merton. 

‘ Not often. Sometimes a St. Ursula girl gets a 
room in the town for me. I have coached two or 
three of them at little reading parties. It gets one 
out of town in autumn : Bloomsbury in August is 
not very fresh. And at Oxford one can “ tout,” or 
“cadge,” for a little work. But there are so many 
of us.’ 

‘What are you busy with just now? ’ 

‘Vatican transcripts at the Record Office.’ 

‘ Any exciting secrets? ’ 

‘ Oh no, only how much the priests here paid to 
Rome for their promotions. Secrets then perhaps: 
not thrilling now.’ 

‘ No schemes to poison people?’ 

‘ Not yet: no plots for novels, and oh, such long- 
winded pontifical Latin, and such awful crabbed 
hands.’ 

‘ It does not seem to lead to much? ’ 

‘ To nothing, in no way. But one is glad to get 
anything.’ 

‘ Jephson, of New, whom I used to know, is doing a 


FROM THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES 21 


book on the Knights of St. John in their Relations to 
the Empire/ said Merton. 

‘Is he?’ said Miss Willoughby, after a scarcely 
distinguishable but embarrassed pause, and she turned 
from Merton to exhibit an interest in the very original 
scheme of mural decoration behind her. 

‘ It is quite a new subject to most people,’ said 
Merton, and he mentally ticked off Miss Willoughby 
as safe, for Jephson, whom he had heard that she 
liked, was a very poor man, living on his fellowship 
and coaching. He was sorry: he had never liked or 
trusted Jephson. 

‘ It is a subject sure to create a sensation, is n’t it? ’ 
asked Miss Willoughby, a little paler than before. 

‘ It might get a man a professorship,’ said Merton. 

‘ There are so many of us, of them, I mean,’ said 
Miss Willoughby, and Merton gave a small sigh. 

‘ Not much larkiness here,’ he thought, and asked a 
transient waiter for champagne. 

Miss Willoughby drank a little of the wine : the 
colour came into her face. 

‘ By ’ Jove, she’s awfully handsome,’ thought 
Merton. 

‘ It was very kind of you to ask me to this festival,’ 
said the girl. ‘ Why have you asked us, me at least? ’ 

‘ Perhaps for many besides the obvious reason,’ 
said Merton. ‘ You may be told later.’ 

‘ Then there is a reason in addition to that which 
most people don’t find obvious? Have you come 
into a fortune ? ’ 

‘ No, but I am coming. My ship is on the sea 
and my boat is on the shore.’ 


22 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


‘ I see faces that I know. There is that tall hand- 
some girl, Miss Markham, with real gold hair, next 
Mr. Logan. We used to call her the Venus of Milo, 
or Milo for short, at St. Ursula’s. She has mantles 
and things tried on her at Madame Claudine’s, and 
stumpy purchasers argue from the effect (neglecting 
the cause) that the the things will suit them. Her 
people were ruined by gold mines somewhere. And 
there is Miss Martin, who does stories for’ the penny 
story papers at a shilling the thousand words. The 
fathers have backed horses, and the children’s teeth 
are set on edge. Is it a Neo-Christian dinner? We 
are all so poor. You have sought us in the highways 
and hedges.’ 

‘ Where the wild roses grow,’ said Merton. 

‘ I don’t know many of the men, though I see faces 
that one used to see in the High. There is Mr. 
Yorker, the athletic man. What is he doing now?’ 

‘ He is sub-vice-secretary of a cricket club. His 
income depends on his bat and his curl from leg. 
But he has a rich aunt.’ 

‘ Cricket does not lead to much, any more than my 
ability to read the worst handwritings of the darkest 
ages. Who is the man that the beautiful lady oppo- 
site is making laugh so?’ asked Miss Willoughby, 
without moving her lips. 

Merton wrote ‘ Bulstrode of Trinity ’ on the back 
of the menu. 

‘ What does he do? ’ 

‘ Nothing,’ said Merton in a low voice. ‘ Been 
alligator farming, or ostrich farming, or ranching, and 
come back shorn ; they all come back. He wants to 


FROM THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES 23 

be an ecclesiastical “ chucker out,” and cope with Mr. 
Kensitt and Co. New profession/ 

‘ He ought not to be here. He can ride and shoot.’ 

‘ He is the only son of his mother and she is a 
widow.’ 

‘ He ought to go out. My only brother is out. I 
wish I were a man. I hate dawdlers.’ She looked 
at him : her eyes were large and grey under black 
lashes, they were dark and louring. • 

‘ Have you, by any chance, a spark of the devil in 
you?’ asked Merton, taking a social header. 

‘ I have been told so, and sometimes thought so,’ 
said Miss Willoughby. ‘ Perhaps this one will go out 
by fasting if not by prayer. Yes, I have a spark of 
the Accuser of the Brethren.’ 

‘ Tant mieiix,' thought Merton. 

All the people were talking and laughing now. 
Miss Maskelyne told a story to the table. She did 
a trick with a wine glass, forks, and a cork. Logan 
interviewed Miss Martin, who wrote tales for the 
penny fiction people, on her methods. Had she a 
moral aim, a purpose? Did she create her characters 
first, and let them evolve their fortunes, or did she 
invent a plot, and make her characters fit in? 

Miss Martin said she began with a situation: ‘I 
wish I could get one somewhere as secretary to a 
man of letters.’ 

^ They can’t afford secretaries,’ said Logan. * Be- 
sides they are family men, married men, and so ’ 

^ And so what? ’ 

^ Go look in any glass, and say,’ said Logan, laugh- 
ing. ‘ But how do you begin with a situation? ’ 


24 THE DISENTANGLERS 

* Oh, anyhow. A lot of men in a darkened room. 
Pitch dark.’ 

‘ A seance? ’ 

‘ No, a conspiracy. They are in the dark that they 
may swear they never saw each other when arrested.’ 

‘ They could swear that anyhow.’ 

‘ Conspirators have consciences. Then there comes 
a red light shining between the door and the floor. 
Then the door t)reaks down under a hammer, the 
light floods the room. There is a man in it whom 
the others never saw enter.’ 

‘ How did he get in? ’ 

‘ He was there before they came. Then the fight- 
ing begins. At the end of it where is the man ? ’ 

‘ Well, where is he? What was he up to? ’ 

‘ I don’t know yet,’ said Miss Martin, ‘ it just comes 
as I go on. It has just got to come. It is a fourteen 
hours a day business. All writing. I crib things 
from the French. Not whole stories. I take the 
opening situation ; say the two men in a boat on the 
river who hook up a sack. I don’t read the rest of 
the Frenchman, I work on from the sack, and guess 
what was in it.’ 

‘ What was in the sack? ’ 

* l7i the Sack! A name for a story ! Anything, 
from the corpse of a freak (good idea, corpse of a 
freak with no arms and legs, or with too many) to a 
model of a submarine ship, or political papers. But 
I am tired of corpses. They pervade my works. 
They give “ a bo.iiqiiet, a fragrance,” as Mr. Talbot 
Twysden said about his cheap claret.’ 

‘You read the old Masters?’ 


FROM THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES 25 

‘ The obsolete Thackeray? Yes, I know him pretty 
well.' 

‘What are you publishing just now?’ 

‘ This to an ‘author? Don’t you know? ’ 

‘ I blush,’ said Logan. 

‘ Unseen,’ said Miss Martin, scrutinising him closely. 

‘ Well, you do not read the serials to which I con- 
tribute,’ she went on. ‘ I have two or three things 
running. There is The Judge's Secret' 

‘ What was that? ’ 

‘ He did it himself.’ 

‘ Did what? ’ 

‘ Killed the bishop. He is not a very plausible 
judge in English: in French he would be all right, a 
juge d' instructioti^ the man who cross-examines the 
prisoners in private, you know,’ 

‘ Judges don’t do that in England,’ said Logan. 

‘ No, but this case is an exception. The judge was 
.such a very old friend, a college friend, of the mur- 
dered bishop. So he takes advantage of his official 
position, and steals into the cell of the accused. My 
public does not know any better, and, of course, I 
have no reviewers. I never come out in a book.’ 

‘ And why did the judge assassinate the prelate? ’ 

‘ The prelate knew too much about the judge, who 
sat in the Court of Probate and Divorce.’ 

‘ Satan reproving sin? ’ asked Logan. 

‘Yes, exactly; and the bishop being interested in 
the case ’ 

‘No scandal about Mrs. Proudie?’ 

‘ No, not that exactly, still, you see the motive? ’ 

‘ I do,’ said Logan. And the conclusion? ’ 


26 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


‘ The bishop was not really dead at all. It takes 
some time to explain. The corpus delicti — you see 
I know my subject — was somebody else. And the 
bishop was alive, and secretly watching the judge, 
disguised as Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Oh, I know it is 
too much in Dickens’s manner. But my public has 
not read Dickens.’ 

‘ You interest me keenly ’ said Logan. 

‘ I am glad to hear it. And the penny public take 
freely. Our circulation goes up. I asked for a rise 
of three pence on the thousand words.’ 

‘ Now this is what I call literary conversation,’ said 
Logan. ‘ It is like reading The British Weekly Book- 
man.- Did you get the threepence? if the inquiry is 
not indelicate.’ 

‘ I got twopence. But, you see, there are so many 
of us.’ 

‘ Tell me more. Are you serialising anything else ? ’ 

‘ Serialising is the right word. I see you know a 
great deal about literature. Yes, I am serialising a 
featured tale.’ 

‘ A featured tale? ’ 

‘ You don’t know what that is? You do not know 
everything yet ! It is called Myself I 

‘Why My self 

‘ Oh, because the narrator did it — the murder. A 
stranger is found in a wood, hung to a tree. Nobody 
knows who he is. But he and the narrator had 
met in Paraguay. He, the murdered man, came 
home, visited the narrator, and fell in love with the 
beautiful being to whom the narrator was engaged. 
So the narrator lassoed him in a wood.’ 


FROM THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES 27 


‘Why?’ 

‘ Oh, the old stock reason. He knew too much.’ 

‘ What did he know? ’ 

‘ Why, that the narrator was living on a treasure 
originally robbed from a church in South America.’ 

‘ But, if it was a treasure, who would care? ’ 

‘ The girl was a Catholic. And the murdered man 
knew more.’ 

‘ How much more?’ 

‘ This : to find out about the treasure, the narrator 
had taken priest’s orders, and, of course, could not 
marry. And the other man, being in love with the 
girl, threatened to tell, and so the lasso came in 
handy. It is a Protestant story and instructive.’ 

‘Jolly instructive! But, Miss Martin, you are the 
Guy Boothby of your sex 1 ’ 

At this supreme tribute the girl blushed like dawn 
upon the hills. 

‘ My word, she is pretty ! ’ thought Logan ; but 
what he said was, ‘ You know Mr. Tierney, your 
neighbour? Out of a job as a composition master. 
Almost reduced to University Extension Lectures on 
Mr. Stephen Phillips and the Drama.’ 

Tierney was talking eagerly to his neighbour, a 
fascinating lady laundress, la belle blanchisseusey 
about starch. 

Further off a lady instructress in cookery, Miss 
Frere, was conversing with a tutor of bridge. 

‘ Tierney,’ said Logan, in a pause, ‘ may I present 
you to Miss Martin?’ Then he turned to Miss 
Markham, formerly known at St. Ursula’s as Milo. 
She had been a teacher of golf, hockey, cricket, fenc- 


28 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


ing, and gymnastics, at a very large school for girls, 
in a very small town. Here she became society to 
such an alarming extent (no party being complete 
without her, while the colonels and majors never left 
her in peace), that her connection with education was 
abruptly terminated. At present raiment was draped 
on her magnificent shoulders at Madame Claudine’s. 
Logan, as he had told Merton, ‘ occasionally met her,’ 
and Logan had the strongest reasons for personal 
conviction that she was absolutely proof against in- 
fection, in the trying circumstances to which a Dis- 
entangler is professionally exposed. Indeed she 
alone of the women present knew from Logan the 
purpose of the gathering. 

Cigarettes had replaced the desire of eating and 
drinking. Merton had engaged a withdrawing room, 
where he meant to be closeted with his guests, one 
by one, administer the oath, and prosecute delicate 
inquiries on the important question of immunity 
from infection. But, after a private word or two 
with Logan, he deemed these conspicuous formal- 
ities needless. ‘ We have material enough to begin 
with,’ said Logan. ‘ We knew beforehand that some 
of the men were safe, and are certain of the women.’ 

There was a balcony. The providence of nature 
had provided a full moon, and a night of balm. The 
imaginative maintained that the scent of hay was 
breathed, among other odours, over Pall Mall the 
Blest. Merton kept straying with one guest or an- 
other into a corner of the balcony. He hinted that 
there was a thing in prospect. Would the guest hold 
himself, or herself, ready at need? Next morning, 


FROM THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES 29 


if the promise was given, the guest might awake to 
peace of conscience. The scheme was beneficent, 
and, incidentally, cheerful. 

To some he mentioned retainers ; money down, 
to speak grossly. Most accepted on the strength 
of Merton’s assurances that their services must al- 
ways be ready. There were difficulties with Miss 
Willoughby and Miss Markham. The former lady 
(who needed it most) flatly refused the arrangement. 
Merton pleaded in vain. Miss Markham, the girl 
known to her contemporaries as Milo, could not 
hazard her present engagement at Madame Claudine’s. 
If she was needed by the scheme in the dead season 
she thought that she could be ready for whatever it 
was. 

Nobody was told exactly what the scheme was. It 
was only made clear that nobody was to be employed 
without the full and exhaustive knowledge of the 
employers, for whom Merton and Logan were merely 
agents. If in doubt, the agents might apply for 
counsel to the lady patronesses, whose very names 
tranquilised the most anxious inquiries. The oath 
was commuted for a promise, on honour, of secrecy. 
And, indeed, little if anything was told that could be 
revealed. The thing was not political : spies on 
Russia or France were not being recruited. That 
was made perfectly clear. Anybody might withdraw, 
if the prospect, when beheld nearer, seemed undesir- 
able. A mystified but rather merry gathering walked 
away to remote lodgings. Miss Maskelyne alone 
patronising a hansom. 

On the day after the dinner Logan and Merton 


30 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


reviewed the event and its promise, taking Trevor 
into their counsels. They were not ill satisfied with 
the potential recruits. 

* There was one jolly little thing in white,’ said 
Trevor. ‘ So pretty and flowering ! “ Cherries ripe 

themselves do cry,” a line in an old song, that’s what 
her face reminded me of. Who was she? ’ 

‘She came with Miss Martin, the penny novelist,’ 
said Logan. ‘ She is stopping with her. A country 
parson’s daughter, come up to town to try to live by 
typewriting.’ 

‘ She will be of no use to us,’ said Merton. ‘ If 
ever a young woman looked fancy-free it is that girl. 
What did you say her name is, Logan?’ 

‘ I did not say, but, though you won’t believe it, 
her name is Miss Blossom, Miss Florry Blossom. Her 
godfathers and godmothers must bear the burden of 
her appropriate Christian name ; the other, the sur- 
name, is a coincidence — designed or not.’ 

‘ Well, she is not suitable,’ said Merton sternly. 
‘ Misplaced affections she might distract, but then, 
after she had distracted them, she might reciprocate 
them. As a conscientious manager I cannot recom- 
mend her to clients.’ 

‘But,’ said Trevor, ‘she may be useful for all that, 
as well as decidedly ornamental. Merton, you ’ll 
want a typewriter for your business correspondence, 
and Miss Blossom typewrites: it is her profession.’ 

‘ Well,’ said Merton, ‘ I am not afraid. I do not 
care too much for “ that garden in her face,” for your 
cherry-ripe sort of young person. If a typewriter is 
necessary I can bear with her as well as another.’ 


FROM THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES 31 

‘ I admire your .courage and resignation,’ said 
Trevor, ‘so now let us go and take rooms for the 
Society.’ 

They found rooms, lordly rooms, which Trevor 
furnished in a stately manner, hanging a selection of 
his mezzotints on the walls — ladies of old years, 
after Romney, Reynolds, Hoppner, and the rest. A 
sober opulence and comfort characterised the cham- 
bers; a well-selected set of books in a Sheraton 
bookcase was intended to beguile the tedium of wait- 
iag clients. The typewriter (Miss Blossom accepted 
the situation) occupied an inner chamber, opening 
out of that which was to be sacred to consultations. 

The firm traded under the title of Messrs. Gray 
and Graham. Their advertisement — in all the news- 
papers — addressed itself ‘To Parents, Guardians, 
Children and others.’ It set forth the sorrows and 
anxieties which beset families in the matter of under 
sirable matrimonial engagements and entanglements. 
The advertisers proposed, by a new method, to re- 
store domestic peace and confidence. ‘ No private 
inquiries will, in any case, be made into the past of 
the parties concerned. The highest references will 
in every instance be given and demanded. Intending 
clients must in the first instance apply by letter to 
Messrs. Gray and Graham. No charge will be made 
for a first interview, which can only be granted after 
satisfactory references have been exchanged by 
letter.’ 

‘ If that does not inspire confidence,’ said Merton, 
‘ I don ’t know what will.’ 

‘ Nothing short of it will do,’ said Logan. 


32 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


*But the mezzotints will carry weight/ said Tevor, 
*and a few good cloisonnes and enamelled snufif-boxes 
and bronzes will do no harm/ 

So he sent in some weedings of his famous 
collection. 


Ill 


ADVENTURE OF THE FIRST CLIENTS 

M erton was reading the newspaper in the 
office, expecting a client. Miss Blossom 
was typewriting in the inner chamber; the door 
between was open. The office boy knocked at 
Merton’s outer door, and the sound of that boy’s 
strangled chuckling was distinctly audible to his 
employer. There is something irritating in the 
foolish merriment of a youthful menial. No con- 
duct could be more likely than that of the office boy 
to irritate the first client, arriving on business of 
which it were hard to exaggerate the delicate and 
anxious nature. 

These reflections flitted through Merton’s mind 
as he exclaimed * Come in,’ with a tone of admon- 
ishing austerity. 

The office boy entered. His face was scarlet, his 
eyes goggled and ran water. Hastily and loudly 
exclaiming ‘ Mr. and Miss Apsley ’ (which 'ended 
with a crow) he stuffed his red pocket handkerchief 
into his mouth and escaped. At the sound of the 
names, Merton had turned towards the inner door, 
open behind him, whence came a clear and pierc- 
ing trill of feminine laughter from Miss Blossom. 
Merton angrily marched to the inner door, and shut 
3 


34 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


his typewriter in with a bang. His heart burned 
within him. Nothing could be so insulting to 
clients; nothing so ruinous to a nascent business. 
He wheeled round to greet his visitors with a face 
of apology ; his eyes on the average level of the 
human countenance divine. There was no human 
countenance divine. There was no human counte- 
nance at that altitude. His eyes encountered the 
opposite wall, and a print of ‘ Mrs. Pelham Feeding 
Chickens. ’ 

In a moment his eyes adjusted themselves to a 
lower elevation. In front of him were standing, 
hand in hand, a pair of small children, a boy of nine 
in sailor costume, but with bare knees not usually 
affected by naval officers, and a girl of seven with 
her finger in her mouth. 

The boy bowed gravely. He was a pretty little 
fellow with a pale oval face, arched eyebrows, 
promise of an aquiline nose, and two large black 
eyes. ‘ I think, sir, ’ said the child, ‘ I have the 
pleasure of redressing myself to Mr. Gray or Mr. 
Graham ? ’ 

‘Graham, at your service,’ said Merton, gravely; 

‘ may I ask you and Miss Apsley to be seated } ’ 

There was a large and imposing arm-chair in 
green leather; the client’s chair. Mr. Apsley 
lifted his little sister into it, and sat down beside 
her himself. She threw her arms round his neck, 
and laid her flaxen curls on his shoulder. Her blue 
eyes looked shyly at Merton out of her fleece of 
gold. The four shoes of the clients dangled at 
some distance above the carpet. 


ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST CLIENTS 35 

‘ You are the author of this article, I think, Mr. 
Graham.?’ said Mr. Apsley, showing his hand, 
which was warm, and holding out a little crumpled 
ball of paper, not precisely fresh. 

Merton solemnly unrolled it; it contained the 
advertisement of his firm. 

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘ I wrote that.’ 

‘You got our letters, for you answered them,’ 
said Mr. Apsley, with equal solemnity. ‘ Why do 
you want Bats and me.? ’ 

‘ The lady’s name is Bats.? ’ said Merton, wonder- 
ing why he was supposed to ‘ want ’ either of the 
pair. 

‘ My name is Batsy. I like you: you are pretty,’ 
said Miss Apsley. 

Merton positively blushed: he was unaccustomed 
to compliments so frank from a member of the sex 
at an early stage of a business interview. He 
therefore kissed his fair client, who put up a pair 
of innocent damp lips, and then allowed her atten- 
tion to be engrossed by a coin on his watch-chain. 

‘ I don’t quite remember your case, sir, or what 
you mean by saying I wanted you, though I am 
delighted to see you,’ he said to Mr. Apsley. ‘ We 
have so many letters! With your permission I shall 
consult the letter book. ’ 

‘The article says “To Parents, Guardians, Chil- 
dren, and others.” It was in print,’ remarked Mr. 
Apsley, with a heavy stress on “children,” and she 
said you wanted us. ’ 

The mystified Merton, wondering who ‘ she ’ was, 
turned the pages of the letter book, and mumbling. 


36 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


* Abernethy, Applecombe, Ap. Davis, Apsley. 
Here we are,’ he began to read the letter aloud. It 
was typewritten, which, when he saw his clients, 
not a little surprised him. 

‘Gentlemen,’ the letter ran, ‘having seen your 
advertisement in the Daily Diatribe of to-day. May 
1 7, I desire to express my wish to enter into com- 
munication with you on a matter of pressing im- 
portance. — I am, in the name of my sister. Miss 
Josephine Apsley, and myself, 

‘ Faithfully yours, 

‘ Thomas Lloyd Apsley. ’ 

‘That’s the letter,’ said Mr. Apsley, ‘and you 
wrote to us. ’ 

‘ And what did I say.? ’ asked Merton. 

‘ Something about preferences, which we did not 
understand. ’ 

‘References, perhaps,’ said Merton. ‘Mr. Aps- 
ley, may I ask whether you wrote this letter 
yourself.? ’ 

‘No; None-so-pretty printed it on a kind of sew- 
ing machine. She told us to come and see you, so 
we came. I called her None-so-pretty, out of a 
fairy story. She does not mind. Gran says she 
thinks she rather likes it. ’ 

‘I shouldn’t wonder if she did,’ said Merton. 

‘ But what is her real name .? ’ 

‘ She made me promise not to tell. She was 
staying at the Home Farm when we were staying 
at Gran’s.’ 

‘ Is Gran your grandmother ? ’ 


ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST CLIENTS 37 


‘Yes,’ replied Mr. Apsley. 

Hereon Bats remarked that she was ‘ velly hun- 
galee. ’ 

‘To be sure, ’ said Merton. ‘Luncheon shall be 
brought at once.’ He rang the bell, and, going 
out, interpellated the office boy. 

‘ Why did you laugh when my friends came to 
luncheon.? You- must learn manners.’ 

‘ Please, sir,, the kid, the young gentleman I 
mean, said he came on business,’ answered the boy, 
showing apoplectic symptoms. 

‘So he did; luncheon is his business. Go and 
bring luncheon for — five, and see that there are 
chicken, cutlets, tartlets, apricots, and ginger-beer.’ 

The boy departed and Merton reflected. ‘ A 
hoax, somebody’s practical joke,’ he said to him- 
self. ‘I wonder who Miss None-so-pretty is.’ 
Then he returned, assured Batsy that luncheon was 
even at the doors, and leaving her to look at Punch, 
led Mr. Apsley aside. ‘Tommy,’ he said (having 
seen his signature), ‘ where do you live.? ’ 

The boy .named a street on the frontiers of St. 
John’s Wood. 

‘ And who is your father.? ’ 

‘ Major Apsley, D.S. O. ’ 

‘ And how did you come here.? ’ 

‘ In a hansom. T told the man to wait. ’ 

‘ How did you get away.? ’ 

‘ Father took us to Lord’s, with Miss Limmer, 
and there was a crowd, and Bats and I slipped out; 
for None-so-pretty said we ought to call on you.’ 

‘ Who is Miss Limmer.? ’ 


38 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


‘ Our governess. ’ 

‘ Have you a mother.^ ’ 

The child’s brown eyes filled with tears, and his 

cheeks flushed. ‘ It was in India that she ’ 

‘ Yes, be a man. Tommy. I am looking the 
other way,’ which Merton did for some seconds. 

‘ Now, Tommy, is Miss Limmer kind to you.? ’ 

The child’s face became strangely set and blank; 
his eyes looking vacant. ‘ Miss Limmer is very 
kind to us. She loves us and we love her dearly. 
Ask Batsy, ’ he said in a monotonous voice, as if he 
were repeating a lesson. ‘Batsy, come here,’ he 
said in the same voice. ‘ Is Miss Limmer kind to 
us.? ’ 

Batsy threw up her eyes — it was like a stage 
effect, ‘ We love Miss Limmer dearly, and she loves 
us. She is very, very kind to us, like our dear 
mamma.’ Her voice was monotonous too. ‘I 
never can say the last part,’ said Tommy. ‘Batsy 
knows it about dear mamma. ’ 

‘ Indeed ! ’ said Merton. ‘ Tommy, why did you 
come here .? ’ 

‘I don’t know. I told you that None-so-pretty 
told us to. She did it after she saw that when we 
were bathing.’ Tommy raised one of his little loose 
breeks that did not cover the knee. 

‘ That was not pleasant to look on : it was on the 
inside of the right thigh.’ 

‘ How did you get hurt there ? ’ asked Merton. 

The boy’s monotonous chant began again : his eyes 
were fixed and blank as before. ‘ I fell off a tree, 
and my leg hit a branch on the way down.’ 


ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST CLIENTS 39 


‘Curious accident,’ said Merton; ‘and None-so- 
pretty saw the mark ? ’ 

‘ Yes.’ 

. ‘ And asked you how you got it?’ 

‘Yes, and she saw blue marks on Batsy, all over 
her arms.’ 

‘ And you told None-so-pretty that you fell off a 
tree? ’ 

‘ Yes.’ 

‘ And she told you to come here? ’ 

‘ Yes, she had read your printed article.’ 

‘ Well, here is luncheon,’ said Merton, and bade 
the office boy call Miss Blossom from the inner 
chamber to share the meal. Batsy had as low a 
chair as possible, and was disposing her napkin to do 
the duty of a pinafore. 

Miss Blossom entered from within with downcast 
eyes. 

‘ None-so-pretty ! ’ 

‘ None-so-pretty ! ’ shouted the children, while 
Tommy rushed to throw his arms round her neck, to 
meet which she stooped down, concealing a face ot 
blushes. Batsy descended from her chair, waddled 
up, climbed another chair, and attacked the girl from 
the rear. The office boy was arranging luncheon. 
Merton called him to the writing-table, scribbled a 
note, and said, ‘Take that to Dr. Maitland, with my 
compliments.’ 

Maitland had been one of the guests at the in- 
augural dinner. He was entirely devoid of patients, 
and was living- on the anticipated gains of a great 
work on Clinical Psychology. 


40 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


‘ Tell Dr. Maitland he will find me at luncheon 
if he comes instantly,’ said Merton as the boy fled on 
his errand. ‘ I see that I need not introduce you 
to my young friends, Miss Blossom,’ said Merton. 
‘ May I beg you to help Miss Apsley to arrange her 
tucker? ’ 

Miss Blossom, almost unbecomingly brilliant in 
her complexion, did as she was asked. Batsy had 
cold chicken, new potatoes, green peas, and two 
helpings of apricot tart. Tommy devoted himself to 
cutlets. A very mild shandygaff was compounded 
for him in an old Oriel pewter. Both children made 
love to Miss Blossom with their eyes. It was not at 
all what Merton felt inclined to do; the lady had 
entangled him in a labyrinth of puzzledom. 

‘ None-so-pretty,’ exclaimed Tommy, ‘ I am glad 
you told us to come here. Your friends are 
nice.’ 

Merton bowed to Tommy, ‘ I am glad too,’ he 
said. ‘ Miss Blossom knew that we were kindred 
souls, same kind of chaps, I mean, you and me, you 
know. Tommy ! ’ 

Miss Blossom became more and more like the 
fabled peony, the crimson variety. Luckily the 
offlce boy ushered in Dr. Maitland, who, exchanging 
glances of surprise with Merton, over the children’s 
heads, began to make himself agreeable. He had 
nearly as many tricks as Miss Maskelyne. He was 
doing the shortsighted man eating celery, and unable 
to find the salt because he is unable to find his 
eyeglass. 

Merton, seeing his clients absorbed in mirth, mur- 


ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST CLIENTS 41 


mured something vague about' business,’ and spirited 
Miss Blossom away to the inner chamber. 

‘ Sit down, pray, Miss Blossom. There is no time 
to waste. What do you know about these children? 
Why did you send them here?’ 

The girl, who was pale enough now, said, ‘I never 
thought they would come.’ 

‘ They are here, however. What do you know 
about them?’ 

‘ I went to stay, lately, at the Home Farm on their 
grandmother’s place. We became great friends. I 
found out that they were motherless, and that they 
were being cruelly ill-treated by their governess.’ 

‘ Miss Dimmer? ’ 

‘Yes. But they both said they loved her dearly. 
They always said that when asked. I gathered from 
their grandmother, old Mrs. Apsley, that their father 
would listen to nothing against the governess. The 
old lady cried in a helpless way, and said he was 
capable of marrying the woman, out of obstinacy, 
if anybody interfered. I had your advertisement, 
and I thought you might disentangle him. It was a 
kind of joke. I only told them that you were a 
kind gentleman. I never dreamed of their really 
coming.’ 

‘ Well, you must take them back again presently, 
there is the address. You must see their father ; you 
must wait till you see him. And how are you to 
explain this escapade? I can’t have the children 
taught to lie.’ 

‘ They have been taught that lesson already.’ 

‘ I don’t think they are aware of it,’ said Merton. 


42 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


Miss Blossom stared. 

‘ I can’t explain, but you must find a way of 
keeping them out of a scrape. ’ 

‘1 think I can manage it,’ said Miss Blossom 
demurely. 

‘ I hope so. And manage, if you please, to see 
this Miss Limmer and observe what kind of person 
she is,’ said Merton, with his hand on the door 
handle, adding, ‘ Please ask Dr. Maitland to come 
here, and do you keep the children amused for a 
moment. ’ 

Miss Blossom nodded and left the room; there 
was laughter in the other chamber. Presently 
Maitland joined Merton. 

‘Look here,’ said Merton, ‘we must be rapid. 
These children are being cruelly ill-treated and 
deny it. Will you get into talk with the boy, and 
ask him if he is fond of his governess, say “Miss 
Limmer,’’ and notice what he says and how he says 
it ^ Then we must pack them away. ’ 

‘ All right,’ said Maitland. 

They returned to the children. Miss Blossom 
retreated to the inner room. Bats simplified mat- 
ters by falling asleep in the client’s chair. Mait- 
land began by talking about schools. Was Tommy 
going to Eton } 

Tommy did not know. He had a governess at 
home. 

‘ Not at a preparatory school yet.^* A big fellow 
like you ? ’ 

Tommy said that he would like to go to school, 
but they would not send him. 


ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST CLIENTS 43 

‘ Why not ? ’ 

Tommy hesitated, blushed, and ended by saying 
that they did n’t think it safe, as he walked in his 
sleep. 

‘ You will soon grow out of that,’ said Maitland, 

* but it is not very safe at school. A boy I knew 
was found sound asleep on the roof at school. ’ 

‘ He might have fallen off,’ said Tommy. 

‘Yes. That’s why your people keep you at 
home. But in a year or two you will be all right. 
Know any Latin yet.? ' 

Tommy said that Miss Limmer taught him Latin. 

‘ Are you and she great friends.? ’ 

Tommy’s face and voice altered as before, while 
he mechanically repeated the tale of the mutual 
affection which linked him with Miss Limmer. 

‘ That's all very jolly,’ said Maitland. 

‘Now, Tommy,’ said Merton, ‘we must waken 
Batsy, and Miss Blossom is going to take you both 
Lome. Hope we shall often meet.’ 

He called Miss Blossom; Batsy kissed both of 
her new friends. Merton conducted the party to 
the cab, and settled, in spite of Tommy’s remon- 
strances, with the cabman, who made a good thing 
of it, and nodded when told to drive away as soon as 
he had deposited his charges at their door. Then 
Merton led Maitland upstairs and offered him a cigar. 

‘ What do you think of it .? ’ he asked. 

‘ Common post-hypnotic suggestion by the gov- 
erness, ’ said Maitland. 

‘ I guessed as much, but can it really be worked 
like that.? You are not chaffing.? ’ 


44 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


‘ Simplest thing to work in the world, ’ said Mait- 
land. ' A lot of nonsense, however, that the public 
believes in can’t be done. The woman could not 
sit down in St. John’s Wood, and ^‘will” Tommy to 
come to her if he was in the next room. At least 
she might “will ” till she was black in the face, and 
he would know nothing about it. But she can put 
him to sleep, and make him say what he does not 
want to say, in answer to questions, afterwards, 
when he is awake. ’ 

‘ You ’re sure of it ? ’ 

‘ It is as certain as anything in the world up to a 
certain point. ’ 

‘ The girl said something that the boy did not 
say, more gushing, about his dead mother.’ 

‘ The hypnotised subject often draws a line some- 
where. ’ 

‘ The woman must be a fiend, ’ said Merton. 

‘Some of them are, now and then,’ said the 
author of Clinical Psychology. 

Miss Blossom’s cab, the driver much encouraged 
by Tommy, who conversed with him through the 
trap in the roof, dashed up to the door of a house 
close to Lord’s. The horse was going fast, and 
nearly cannoned into another cab-horse, also going 
fast, which was almost thrown on its haunches by 
the driver. Inside the other hansom was a tall man 
with a pale face under the tan, who was nervously 
gnawing his moustache. Miss Blossom saw him, 
Tommy saw him, and cried ‘ Father! ’ Half-hidden 
behind a blind of the house Miss Blossom beheld a 


ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST CLIENTS 45 

woman’s face, expectant. Clearly she was Miss 
Limmer. All the while that they were driving 
Miss Blossom’s wits had been at work to construct 
a story to account for the absence and return of the 
children. Now, by a flash of invention, she called 
to her cabman, ‘Drive on — fast!’ Major Apsley 
saw his lost children with their arms round the neck 
of a wonderfully pretty girl; the pretty girl waved 
her parasol to him with a smile, beckoning for- 
wards; the children waved their arms, calling out 
‘ A race I a race I ’ 

What could a puzzled parent do but bid his cab- 
man follow like the wind.^ Miss Blossom’s cab 
flew past Lord’s, dived into Regent’s Park, leading 
by two lengths; reached the Zoological Gardens, 
and there its crew alighted, demurely waiting for 
the Major. He leaped from his hansom, and taking 
off his hat, strode up to Miss Blossom, as if he were 
leading a charge. The children captured him by 
the legs. ‘What does this mean. Madam What 
are you doing with my children ? Who are you.^ ’ 

‘She’s None-so-pretty, ’ said Tommy, by way of 
introduction. 

Miss Blossom bowed with grace, and raising her 
head, shot two violet rays into the eyes of the 
Major, which were of a bistre hue. But they ac- 
cepted the message, like a receiver in wireless 
telegraphy. No man, let be a Major, could have 
resisted None-so-pretty at that moment. ‘ Come 
into the gardens,' she said, and led the way. ‘ You 
would like a ride on the elephant. Tommy.!*’ she 
asked Master Apsley. ‘ And you, Batsy.!* ’ 


46 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


The children shouted assent. 

^ How in the world does she know them ? ’ thought 
the bewildered ofificer. 

The children mounted the elephant. 

‘Now, Major Apsley, ’ said Miss Blossom, ‘I 
have found your children.’ 

‘ I owe you thanks. Madam ; I have been very 
anxious, but ’ 

‘ It is more than your thanks I want. I want you 
to do something for me, a very little thing,’ said 
Miss Blossom, with the air of a supplicating angel, 
the violet eyes dewy with tears. 

‘ I am sure I shall be delighted to do anything 
you ask, but ’ 

‘Will you promise f It is a very little thing 
indeed ! ’ and her hands were clasped in entreaty. 

‘ Please promise ! ’ 

‘ Well, I promise. ’ 

‘ Then keep your word: it is a litle thing! Take 
Tommy home this instant, let nobody speak to him 
or touch him — and — make him take a bath, and 
see him take it.’ 

‘ Take a bath 1 ’ 

‘ Yes, at once, along with you. Then ask him 
. . . any questions you please, but pay extreme 
attention to his answers and his face, and the sound 
of his voice. If that is not enough do the same 
with Batsy. And after that I think you had better 
not let the children out of your sight for a short time. ’ 

‘ These are very strange requests. ’ 

‘ And it was by a strange piece of luck that I met 
you driving home to see if the lost children were 


ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST CLIENTS 47 

found, and secured your attention before it could be 
pre-engaged. ’ 

* But where did you find them and why > ’ 

Miss Blossom interrupted him, ‘ Here is the ad- 
dress of Dr. Maitland, I have written it on my own 
card; he can answer some questions you may want 
to ask. Later I will answer anything. And now 
in the name of God, ’ said the girl reverently, with 
sudden emotion, ‘ you will keep your promise to the 
letter ? ’ 

‘ I will,’ said the Major, and Miss Blossom waved 
her parasol to the children. ‘ You must give the 
poor elephant a rest, he is tired,’ she cried, and the 
tender-hearted Batsy needed no more to make her 
descend from the great earth-shaking beast. The 
children attacked her with kisses, and then walked 
off, looking back, each holding one of the paternal 
hands, and treading, after the manner of childhood, 
on the paternal toes. 

Miss Blossom walked till she met an opportune 
omnibus. 

About an hour later a four-wheeler bore a woman 
with blazing eyes, and a pile of trunks gaping 
untidily, from the Major’s house in St. John’s 
Wood Road. 

The Honourable Company had won its first vic- 
tory: Major Apsley, having fulfilled Miss Blossom’s 
commands, had seen what she expected him to see, 
and was disentangled. 

The children still call their new stepmother 
None-so-pretty. 


IV 


ADVENTURE OF THE RICH UNCLE 

H IS God is his belly, Mr. Graham,’ said the 
client, 'and if the text strikes you as dis- 
agreeably unrefined, think how it must pain me to 
speak thus of an uncle, if only by marriage. ’ 

The client was a meagre matron of forty-five, or 
thereabouts. Her dark scant hair was smooth, and 
divided down the middle. Acerbity spoke in every 
line of her face, which was of a dusky yellow, 
where it did not rather verge on the faint hues of a 
violet past its prime. She wore thread gloves, and 
she carried a battered reticule of early Victorian 
days, in which Merton suspected that tracts were 
lurking. She had an anxious peevish mouth ; in 
truth she was not the kind of client in whom Mer- 
ton’s heart delighted. 

And yet he was sorry for her, especially as her 
rich uncle’s cook was the goddess of the gentleman 
whose god had just been denounced in scriptural 
terms by the client, a Mrs. Gisborne. She was sad, 
as well she might be, for she was a struggler, with 
a large family, and great expectations from the 
polytheistic uncle who adored his cook and one of 
his nobler organs. 


ADVENTURES OF THE RICH UNCLE 49 

‘What has his history been, this gentleman's — 
Mr. Fulton, I think you called him.? ’ 

‘He was a drysalter in the City, sir,’ and across 
Merton’s mind flitted a vision of a dark shop with 
Finnan haddocks, bacon, and tongues in the win- 
dow, and smelling terribly of cheese. 

‘Oh, a drysalter.?’ he said, not daring to display 
ignorance by asking questions to corroborate his 
theory of the drysalting business. 

‘A drysalter, sir, and isinglass importer.’ 

Merton was conscious of vagueness as to isinglass, 
and was distantly reminded of a celebrated race- 
horse. However, it was clear that Mr. Fulton was 
a retired tradesman of some kind. ‘He went out of 
isinglass — before the cheap scientific substitute 
was invented (it is made out of old quill pens) — 
with seventy-five thousand pounds. And it ought to 
come to my children. He has not another relation 
living but ourselves; he married my aunt. But we 
never see him: he said that he could not stand our 
Sunday dinners at Hampstead. ’ 

A feeling not remote from sympathy with Mr. 
Fulton stole over Merton.’s mind as he pictured 
these festivals. ‘ Is his god very — voluminous.? ’ 
Mrs. Gisborne stared. 

‘ Is he a very portly gentleman ’ 

‘No, Mr. Graham, he is next door to a skeleton, 
though you would not expect it, considering.’ 

‘ Considering his devotion to the pleasures of the 
table .? ’ 

‘ Gluttony, shameful waste / call it. And he is 
a stumbling block and a cause of offence to others. 

4 


50 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


He is a patron of the City and Suburban College of 
Cookery, and founded two scholarships there, for 
scholars learning how to pamper the ’ 

‘The epicure, said Merton. He knew the City 
and Suburban College of Cookery. One of his 
band, a Miss Frere, was a Fellow and Tutor of that 
academy. ’ 

‘And about what age is your uncle ’ he asked. 

‘About sixty, and not a white hair on his head.’ 

‘Then he may marry his cook.? ’ 

‘ He will, sir. ’ 

‘And is very likely to have a family.’ 

Mrs. Gisborne sniffed, and produced a pocket 
handkerchief from the early Victorian reticlue. 
She applied the handkerchief to her eyes in silence. 
Merton observed her with pity. ‘ We need the 
money so; there are so many of us,’ said the 
lady. 

‘Do you think that Mr. Fulton is — passionately 
in love, with his domestic.? ’ 

‘He only loves his meals,’ said Mrs. Gisborne; 

^ he does not want to marry her, but she has a hold 
over him through — his ’ 

‘Passions, not of the heart,’ said Merton hastily. 
He dreaded an anatomical reference. 

‘ He is afraid of losing her. He and his cronies 
give each other dinners, jealous of each other they 
are; and he acutally pays the woman two hundred a 
year. ’ 

‘And beer money.?’ said Merton. He had some- 
where read or heard of beer money as an item in 
domestic finance. 


ADVENTURES OF THE RICH UNCLE 51 


‘I don’t know about that. The cruel thing is 
that she is a woman of strict temperance principles. 
So am 1. I am sure it is an awful thing to say, Mr. 
Graham, but Satan has sometimes put it into my 
heart to wish that the woman, like too, too many of 
her sort, was the victim of alcoholic temptations. 
He has a fearful temper, and if once she was not fit 
for duty at one of his dinners, this awful gnawing 
anxiety would cease to ride my bosom. He would 
pack her off. ’ 

‘Very natural. She is free from the besetting 
sin of the artistic temperament.?’ 

‘ If you mean drink, she is; and that is one reason 
why he values her. His last cook, and his last 

but one ’ Here Mrs. Gisborne narrated at 

some length the tragic histories of these artists. 

‘Providential, I thought it, but now , ’ she said 

despairingly. 

‘ She certainly seems a difficult woman to dis- 
lodge, ’ said Merton. ‘A dangerous entanglement. 
Any followers allowed.? Could anything be done 
through the softer emotions.? Would a guardsman, 
for instance .? ’ 

‘ She hates the men. Never one of them darkens 
her kitchen fire. Offers she has had by the score, 
but they come by post, and she laughs and burns 
them. Old Mr. Potter, one of his cronies, tried to 
get her away that way, but he is over seventy, and 
old at that, and she thought she had another chance 
to better herself. And she ’ll take it, Mr. Graham, 
if you can’t do something: she ’ll take it.’ 

‘ Will you permit me to say that you seem to know 


52 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


a good deal about her! Perhaps you have some 
sort of means of intelligence in the enemy’s camp? ’ 

‘ The kitchen maid,’ said Mrs. Gisborne, purpling 
a little, * is the sister of our servant, and tells her 
things.’ 

‘ I see,’ said Merton. ‘ Now can you remember 
any little weakness of this, I must frankly admit, 
admirable artist and exemplary woman?’ 

‘ You are not going to take her side, a scheming 
red faced hussy, Mr. Graham?’ 

‘ I never betrayed a client. Madam, and if you 
mean that I am likely to help this person into your 
uncle’s arms, you greatly misconceive me, and the 
nature of my profession.’ 

‘ I beg your pardon, sir, but I will say that your 
heart does not seem to be in the case.’ 

‘ It is not quite the kind of case with which we 
are accustomed to deal,’ said Merton. ‘ But you 
have not answered my question. Are there any 
weak points in the defence? To Venus she is cold, 
of Bacchus she is disdainful.’ 

* I never heard of the gentleman I am sure, sir, 

but as to her weaknesses, she has the temper of a ’ 

Here Mrs. Gisborne paused for a comparison. Her 
knowledge of natural history and of mythology, the 
usual sources of parallels, failed to provide a satis- 
factory resemblance to the cook’s temper. 

‘ The temper of a Megaera,’ said Merton, admitting 
to himself that the word was not, though mythologi- 
cal, what he could wish. 

‘ Of a Megaera as you know that creature, sir, and 
impetuous ! If everything is not handy, if that 


ADVENTURES OF THE RICH UNCLE 53 

poor girl is not like clockwork with the sauces, and 
herbs, and things, if a saucepan boils over, or a ham 
falls into the fire, if the girl treads on the tail of one 
of the cats — and the woman keeps a dozen — then 
she flies at her with anything that comes handy.’ 

‘She is fond of cats?’ said Merton; ‘really this 
lady has sympathetic points : ’ and he patted the 
grey Russian puss, Kutuzoff, which was a witness to 
these interviews. 

‘ She dotes on the nasty things: and you may well 
say “ lady ! ” Her Siamese cat, a wild beast he is, 
took the first prize at the Crystal Palace Show. 
The papers said “ Miss Blowser’s Rangoon^ bred by 
the exhibitor.” Miss Blowser ! I don’t know what 
the world is coming to. He stands on the door- 
steps, the cat, like a lynx, and as fierce as a lion. 
Why he got her into the police-court: flew at a dog, 
and nearly tore his owner, a clergyman, to pieces. 
There were articles about it in the papers.’ 

‘ I seem to remember it,’ said Merton. ‘ Christianos 
ad Leones' In fact he had written this humorous ar- 
ticle himself ‘ But is there nothing else? ’ he asked. 
‘ Only a temper, so natural to genius disturbed or 
diverted in the process of composition, and a 
passion for the felidae, such as has often been 
remarked in the great. There was Charles Baude- 
laire, Mahomet ’ 

‘ I don’t know what you mean, sir, and,’ said Mrs. 
Gisborne, rising, and snapping her reticule, ‘ I think 
I was a fool for answering your advertisement. I 
did not come here to be laughed at, and I think 
common politeness ’ 


54 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


‘ I beg a thousand pardons,’ said Merton. ‘ I am 
most distressed at my apparent discourtesy. My 
mind was preoccupied by the circumstances of this 
very difficult case, and involuntarily glided into liter- 
ary anecdote on the subject of cats and their owners. 
They are my passion — cats — and I regret that they 
inspire you with antipathy.’ Here he picked up 
Kutuzoff and carried him into the inner room. 

‘It is not that I object to any of Heaven’s crea- 
tures kept in their place,’ said Mrs. Gisborne some- 
what mollified, ‘ but you must make allowances, sir, 
for my anxiety. It sours a mother of nine. Friday 
is one of his gorging dinner-parties, and who knows 
what may happen if she pleases him? The kitchen 
maid says, I mean I hear, that she wears an engaged 
ring already. ’ 

‘ That is very bad,’ said Merton, with sympathy. 
‘The dinner is on Friday, you say?’ and he made 
a note of the date. 

‘Yes, 15 Albany Grove, on the Regent’s Canal.’ 

‘You can think of nothing else — no weakness to 
work on ? ’ 

‘ No, sir, just her awful temper; I would save him 
from it, for he has another as bad. And besides hopes 
from him have kept me up so long, his only rela- 
tion, and times are so hard, and schooling and boots, 
and everything so dear, and we so many in family.’ 
Tears came into the poor lady’s eyes. 

‘ I ’ll give the case my very best attention,’ he said, 
shaking hands with the client. To Merton’s horror 
she tried. Heaven help her, to pass a circular packet, 
wrapped in paper, into his hand. He evaded it. It 


ADVENTURES OF THE RICH UNCLE 55 


was a first interview, for which no charge was made. 
‘ What can be done shall be done, though I confess 
that I do not see my way,’ and he accompanied her 
downstairs to the street. 

‘ I behaved like a cad with my chaff,’ he said to 
himself,’ but hang me if I see how to help her. And 
I rather admire that cook.’ 

He went into the inner room, wakened the sleeping 
partner, Logan, on the sofa, and unfolded the case 
with every detail. ‘ What can we do, que faire ! ’ 

‘ There ’s an exhibition of modern, mediaeval, 
ancient, and savage cookery at Earl’s Court, the 
Cookeries,’ said Logan. ‘ Could n’t we seduce an 
artist like Miss Blowser there, I mean thither of 
course, the night before .the dinner, and get her up 
into the Great Wheel and somehow stop the Wheel 
— and make her too late for her duties?’ 

‘ And how. are you going to stop the Wheel? ” 

‘ Speak to the man at the Wheel. Bribe the 
beggar.’ 

‘ Dangerous, and awfully expensive. Then think 
of all the other people on the Wheel ! Logan, votis 
chassez de race. The old Restalrig blood is in your 
veins.’ 

‘ My ancestors nearly nipped off with a king, and 
why can’t I carry off a cook? Hustle her into a 
hansom ’ 

‘ Oh, bah ! these are not modern methods.’ 

‘ II ny a rien tel que d'e^ilever! said Logan. 

‘ I never shall stain the cause with police-courts,’ 
said Merton. ‘ It would be fatal.’ 

‘ I ’ve heard of a cook who fell on his sword when 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


S6 

the fish did not come up to time. Now a raid on the 
fish? She might fall on her carving knife when they 
did not arrive, or leap into the flames of the kitchen 
fire, like CEnone, don’t you know.’ 

‘ Bosh. Vatel was far from the sea, and he had 
not a fish-monger’s shop round the corner. Be 
modern.’ 

Logan rumpled his hair, ‘ Can’t I get her to lunch 
at a restaurant and ply her with the wines of Eastern 
France? No, she is Temperance personified. Can’t 
we send her a forged telegram to say that her mother 
is dying? Servants seem to have such lots of 
mothers, always inconveniently, or conveniently, 
moribund.’ 

‘ I won’t have forgery. Great heavens, how obso- 
lete you are ! Besides, that would not put her 
employer in a rage.’ 

‘ Could I go and consult Conan Doyle? He is a 
man of ideas.’ 

‘He is a man of the purest principles — and an 
uncommonly hard hitter.’ 

‘ It is his purity I want. My own mind is heredi- 
tarily lawless. I want something not immoral, yet 
efficacious.’ 

‘ There was that parson, whom you say the woman’s 
cat nearly devoured. Like Paul with beasts he fought 
the cat. Now, I wonder if that injured man is not 
meditating some priestly revenge that would do our 
turn and get rid of Miss Blowser? ’ 

Merton shook his head impatiently. His own 
invention was busy, but to no avail. Miss Blowser 
seemed impregnable. Kutuzofif Hedzoff, the puss. 


ADVENTURES OF THE RICH UNCLE 57 

stalked up to Logan and leaped on his knees. Logan 
stroked him, Kutuzoff purred and blinked, Logan 
sought inspiration in his topaz eyes. At last he 
spoke: ‘Will you leave this affair to me, Merton? 
I think I have founds out a way.’ 

‘ What way? ’ 

‘That’s my secret. You are so beastly moral, 
you might object. One thing I may tell you — it 
does not compromise the Honourable Company of 
Disentanglers.’ 

‘ You are not going to try any detective work; to 
find out if she is a woman with a past, with a husband 
living? You are not going to put a live adder among 
the eels? I daresay drysalters eat eels. It is the 
reading of sensational novels that ruins our youth.’ 

‘ What a suspicious beggar you are. Certainly I 
am neither a detective nor a murderer d la Montepinl 

‘ No practical jokes with the victuals? ’ 

‘ Of course not.’ 

‘ No kidnapping Miss Blowser? ’ 

‘Certainly no kidnapping — Miss Blowser.’ 

‘Now, honour bright, is your plan within the law? 
No police-court publicity?’ 

‘ No, the police will have no say or show in the 
matter; at least,’ said Logan, as far as my legal 
studies inform me, they won’t. But I can take 
counsel’s opinion if you insist on it.’ 

‘ Then you are sailing near the wind?’ 

‘ Really I don’t think so : not really what you call 
near.’ 

‘ I am sorry for that unlucky Mrs. Gisborne,’ said 
Merton, musingly. ‘ And with two such tempers as 


58 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


the cook’s and Mr. Merton’s the match could not be 
a happy one. Well, Logan, I suppose you won’t tell 
me what your game is? ’ 

‘ Better not, I think, but, I assure you, honour is safe. 
I am certain that nobody can say anything. I rather 
expect to earn public gratitude, on the whole. You 
can’t appear in any way, nor the rest of us. By-the- 
bye do you remember the address of the parson whose 
dog was hurt? ’ 

‘I think I kept a cutting of the police case; it 
was amusing,’ said Merton, looking through a kind 
of album, and finding presently the record of the 
incident. 

‘ It may come in handy, or it may not,’ said Logan. 
He then went off, and had Merton followed him he 
might not have been reassured. For Logan first 
walked to a chemist’s shop, where he purchased a 
quantity of a certain drug. Next he went to the 
fencing rooms which he frequented, took his fencing 
mask and glove, borrowed a fencing glove from a 
left-handed swordsman whom he knew, and drove to 
his rooms with this odd assortment of articles. Hav- 
ing deposited them, he paid a call at the dwelling of 
a fair member of the Disentanglers, Miss Frere, the 
lady instructoress in the culinary art; at the City and 
Suburban College of Cookery, whereof, as we have 
heard, Mr. Fulton, the eminent drysalter, was a patron 
and visitor. Logan unfolded* the case and his plan 
of campaign to Miss Frere, who listened with intelli- 
gent sympathy. 

‘ Do you know the man by sight? ’ he asked. 

‘ Oh yes, and he knows me perfectly well. Last 


ADVENTURES OF THE RICH UNCLE 59 


year he distributed the prizes at the City and Subur- 
ban School of Cookery, and paid me the most ex- 
traordinary compliments.’ 

‘ Well deserved, I am confident,’ said Logan ; ‘ and 
now you are sure that you know exactly what you 
have to do, as I have explained?’ 

‘ Yes, I am to be walking through Albany Grove 
at a quarter to four on Friday,’ 

‘ Be punctual.’ 

‘ You may rely on me,’ said Miss Frere. 

Logan next day went to Trevor’s rooms in the 
Albany ; he was the capitalist who had insisted on 
helping to finance the Disentanglers. To Trevor he 
explained the situation, unfolded his plan, and asked 
leave to borrow his private hansom. 

‘ Delighted,’ said Trevor. ‘ I ’ll put on an old suit 
of tweeds, and a seedy bowler, and drive you myself. 
It will be fun. Or should we take my motor car? ’ 

‘No, it attracts too much attention.’ 

‘ Suppose we put a number on my cab, and paint 
the wheels yellow, like pirates, you know, when they 
are disguising a captured ship. It won’t do to look 
like a private cab.’ 

‘These strike me as judicious precautions, Trevor, 
and worthy of your genius. That is, if we are not 
caught.’ 

‘Oh, we won’t be caught,’ said Trevor, ‘But, in 
the*meantime, let us find that place you mean to go 
to on a map of London, and I ’ll drive you there now 
in a dog-cart. It is better to know the lie of the land.’ 

Logan agreed and they drove to his objective in 
the afternoon ; it was beyond the border of known 


6o 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


West Hammersmith. Trevor reconnoitred and made 
judicious notes of short cuts. 

On the following day, which was Thursday, Logan 
had a difficult piece of diplomacy to execute. He 
called at the rooms of the clergyman, a bachelor and 
a curate, whose dog and person had suffered from the 
assaults of Miss Blowser’s Siamese favourite. He ex- 
pected difficulties, for a good deal of ridicule, includ- 
ing Merton’s article, Christianos ad Leones, had been 
heaped on this martyr. Logan looked forward to 
finding him crusty, but, after seeming a little puzzled, 
the holy man exclaimed, ‘ Why, you must be Logan 
of Trinity?’ 

‘ The same,’ said Logan, who did not remember 
the face or name (which was Wilkinson) of his host. 

‘Why, I shall never forget your running catch under 
the scoring-box at Lord’s,’ exclaimed Mr. Wilkinson, 

‘ I can see it now. It saved the match. I owe you 
more than I can say,’ he added with deep emotion. 

‘ Then be grateful, and do me a little favour. I 
want — just for an hour or two — to borrow your 
dog,’ and he stooped to pat the animal, a fox-terrier 
bearing recent and glorious scars. 

‘ Borrow Scout ! Why, what can you want with 
him?’ 

‘ I have suffered myself through an infernal wild 
beast of a cat in Albany Grove,’ said Logan, ‘ and I have 
a scheme — it is unchristian I own — of revenge.’ 

The curate’s eyes glittered vindictively : ‘ Scout is 
no match for the brute,’ he said in a tone of manly 
regret. 

‘ Oh, Scout will be all right. There is not going to 


ADVENTURES OF THE RICH UNCLE 6i 


be a fight. He is only needed to — give tone to the 
affair. You will be able to walk him safely through 
Albany Grove after to-morrow.’ 

‘Won’t there be a row if you kill the cat? He is 
what they think a valuable animal. I never could 
stand cats myself.’ 

‘ The higher vermin,’ said Logan. ‘ But not a hair 
of his whiskers shall be hurt. He will seek other 
haunts, that’s all.’ 

‘ But you don’t mean to steal him? ’ asked the cur- 
ate anxiously. ‘ You see, suspicion might fall on me, 
as I am known to bear a grudge to the brute.’ 

‘ I steal him ! Not I,’ said Logan. ‘ He shall sleep 
in his owner’s arms, if she likes. But Albany Grove 
shall know him no more.’ 

‘Then you may take Scout,’ said Mr. Wilkinson. 
‘ You have a cab there, shall I drive to your rooms 
with you and him? ’ 

‘ Do,’ said Logan, ‘ and then dine at the club.’ 
Which they did, and talked much cricket, Mr. 
Wilkinson being an enthusiast. 

Next day, about 3.40 P.M., a hansom drew up at 
the corner of Albany Grove. The fare alighted, and 
sauntered past Mr. Fulton’s house. Rangoon, the 
Siamese puss, was sitting in a scornful and leonine 
attitude, in a tree of the garden above the railings, 
outside the open kitchen windows, whence came 
penetrating and hospitable smells of good fare. The 
stranger passed, and as he returned, dropped some- 
thing here and there on the pavement. It was vale- 
rian, which no cat can resist. 


62 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


Miss Blowser was in a culinary crisis, and could 
not leave the kitchen range. Her face was of a fiery 
complexion ; her locks were in a fine disorder. ‘ Is 
Rangoon in his place, Mary?’ she inquired of the 
kitchen maid. 

‘ Yes, ma’am, in his tree,’ said the maid. 

In this tree Rangoon used to sit like a Thug, drop- 
ping down on dogs who passed by. 

Presently the maid said, ‘ Ma’am, Rangoon has 
jumped down, and is walking off to the right, after 
a gentleman.’ 

‘ After a sparrow, I dare say, bless him,’ said Miss 
Blowser. Two minutes later she asked, * Has Rangy 
come back? ’ 

‘ No, ma’am.’ 

‘Just look out and see what he is doing, the 
dear.’ 

‘ He ’s walking along the pavement, ma’am, sniff- 
ing at something. And oh ! there ’s that curate’s 
dog.’ 

‘Yelping little brute! I hope Rangy will give him 
snuff,’ said Miss Blowser. 

‘ He ’s flown at him,’ cried the maid ambiguously, 
in much excitement. ‘Oh, ma’am, the gentleman 
has caught hold of Rangoon. He’s got a wire 
mask on his face, and great thick gloves, not to be 
scratched. He ’s got Rangoon : he ’s putting him in 
a bag,’ but by this time Miss Blowser, brandishing a 
saucepan with a long handle, had rushed out of the 
kitchen, through the little garden, cannoned against 
Mr. Fulton, who happened to be coming in with 
flowers to decorate his table, knocked him against a 


ADVENTURES OF THE RICH UNCLE 63 


lamp-post, opened the garden gate, and, armed and 
bareheaded as she was, had rushed forth. You might 
have deemed that you beheld Bellona speeding to the 
fray. 

What Miss Blowser saw was a man disappearing 
into a hansom, whence came the yapping of a dog. 
Another cab was loitering by, empty; and this cab- 
man had his orders. Logan had seen to that. To 
hail that cab, to leap in, to cry, ‘Follow the scoun- 
drel in front: a sovereign if you catch him,’ was to 
active Miss Blowser the work of a moment. The 
man whipped up his horse, the pursuit began, ‘ there 
was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,’ Marylebone 
rang with the screams of female rage and distress. 
Mr. Fulton, he also, leaped up and rushed in pursuit, 
wringing his hands. He had no turn of speed, and 
stopped panting. He only saw Miss Blowser whisk 
into her cab, he only heard her yells that died in the 
distance. Mr. Fulton sped back into his house. He 
shouted for Mary: ‘What’s the matter with your 
mistress, with my cook ? ’ he raved. 

‘ Somebody ’s taken her cat, sir, and is off in a cab, 
and her after him.’ 

‘ After her cat ! D her cat ’ cried Mr. Fulton. 

My dinner will be ruined ! It is the last she shall 
touch in this house. Out she packs — pack her things^ 
Mary; no, don’t — do what you can in the kitchen. I 
must find a cook. Her cat ! ’ and with language un- 
worthy of a drysalter Mr. Fulton clapped on his hat, 
and sped into the street, with a vague idea of hurry- 
ing to Fortnum and Mason’s, or some restaurant, or a 
friend’s house, indeed to any conceivable place where 


64 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


a cook might be recruited impromptu. ‘ She leaves 
this very day,’ he said aloud, as he all but collided 
with a lady, a quiet, cool-looking lady, who stopped 
and stared at him. 

‘ Oh, Miss Frere ! ’ said Mr. Fulton, raising his hat, 
with a wild gleam of hope in the trouble of his eyes, 
‘ I have had such a misfortune ! ’ 

‘What has happened, Mr. Fulton? ’ 

‘ Oh, ma’am, I ’ve lost my cook, and me with a 
dinner-party on to-day.’ 

‘ Lost your cook? Not by death, I hope? ’ 

‘ No, ma’am, she has run away, in the very crisis, 
as I may call it.’ 

‘ With whom? ’ 

‘With nobody. After her cat. In a cab. I am 
undone. Where can I find a cook? You may know 
of some one disengaged, though it is late in the day, 
and dinner at seven. Can’t you help me? ’ 

‘ Can you trust me, Mr. Fulton?’ 

‘ Trust you ; how, ma’am ? ’ 

‘ Let me cook your dinner, at least till your cook 
catches her cat,’ said Miss Frere, smiling. 

‘ You, don’t mean it, a lady ! ’ 

‘ But a professed cook, Mr. Fulton, and anxious to 
help so nobly generous a patron of the art ... if 
you can trust me.’ 

‘ Trust you, ma’am ! ’ said Mr. Fulton, raising to 
heaven his obsecrating hands. ‘ Why, you ’re a genius. 
It is a miracle, a mere miracle of good luck.’ 

By this time, of course, a small crowd of little 
boys and girls, amateurs of dramatic scenes, was 
gathering. 


ADVENTURES OF THE RICH UNCLE 65 

‘We have no time to waste. Mr. Fulton. Let 
us go in, and let me get to work. I dare say 
the cook will be back before I have taken off my 
gloves.’ 

‘ Not her, nor does she cook again in my house. 
The shock might have killed a man of my age,’ said 
Mr. Fulton, breathing heavily, and leading the way 
up the steps to his own door. Her cat, the hussy ! ’ 
he grumbled. 

Mr. Fulton kept his word. When Miss Blowser 
returned, with her saucepan and Rangoon, she 
found her trunks in the passage, corded by Mr. 
Fulton’s own trembling hands, and she departed 
for ever. 

Her chase had been a stern chase, a long chase, 
the cab driven by Trevor had never been out of 
sight. It led her, in the western wilds, to a Home for 
Decayed and Destitute Cats, and it had driven away 
before she entered the lane leading to the Home. 
But there she found Rangoon. He had just been 
deposited there, in a seedy old traveller’s fur-lined 
sleeping bag, the matron of the Home said, by a very 
pleasant gentleman, who said he had found the cat 
astray, lost, and thinking him a rare and valuable 
animal had deemed it best to deposit him at the 
Home. He had left money to pay for advertisements. 
He had even left the advertisement, typewritten (by 
Miss Blossom.) 

‘FOUND. A magnificent Siamese Cat. Apply to 
the Home for Destitute and Decayed Cats, Water 
Lane, West Hammersmith.’ 

‘ Very thoughtful of the gentleman,’ said the matron 
5 


66 


THE DISENTANGLERS 


of the Home. ‘ No ; he did not leave any address. 
Said something about doing good by stealth.’ 

‘Stealth, why he stole my cat!’ exclaimed Miss 
Blowser. ‘ He must have had the advertisement 
printed like that ready beforehand. It ’s a conspiracy/ 
and she brandished her saucepan. 

The matron, who was prejudiced in favour of 
Logan, and his two sovereigns, which now need not 
be expended in advertisements, was alarmed by the 
hostile attitude of Miss Blowser. ‘There’s your cat,’ 
she said drily; ‘ it ain’t stealing a cat to leave it, with 
money for its board, and to pay for advertisements, 
in a well-conducted charitable institution, with a 
duchess for president. And he even left five shillings 
to pay for the cab of anybody as might call for the 
cat. There is your money.’ 

Miss Blowser threw the silver away. 

‘ Take your old cat in the bag,’ said the matron, 
slamming the door in the face of Mrs. Blowser. 

After the trial for breach of promise of marriage, 
and after paying the very considerable damages which 
Miss Blowser demanded and received, old Mr. Fulton 
hardened his heart, and engaged a male chef. 

The gratitude of Mrs. Gisborne, now free from all 
anxiety, was touching. But Merton assured her that 
he knew nothing whatever of the stratagem, scarcely 
a worthy one, he thought, as she reported it, by 
which her uncle was disentangled. 

It was Logan’s opinion, and it is mine, that he has 
not been guilty of theft, but perhaps of the wrongous 
detention or imprisonment of Rangoon. ‘ But,’ he 


i Lore. 


ADVENTURES OF THE RICH UNCLE 67 

said, * the Habeas Corpus Act has no clause about 
cats.’ 

Miss Blowser is now Mrs. Potter. She married 
her aged wooer, and Rangoon still wins prizes at the 
Crystal Palace. 




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